Message from my father to my son

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Leo is still terribly in love. “I have a heart broken,” he told me last night. The cause of this is still Eloise who has now apparently fallen in love with a boy with dark hair – can you imagine?

“It’s not about how cute you are mummy,” he told me angrily last night. “It’s about how clever you are. And he is really really stupid.”

My father (pictured above with the children in Florence) sent the following advice to him, in Italian of course, translated for the blog by my mother.

Dear Leonardo,
I write to you in Italian and your mother despite speaking a miserable Italian with double errors will translate.

In our world, women are as numerous as the leaves on the trees and the arenas of the sea. If you ask too much from one of them, you show little appreciation to all the others. Always remember this saying by Don Giovanni: if you are faithful to one woman, you are unfaithful to all the others.

You need to be wise and grateful. It is natural to fall in love, but you must never forget that if you show it too much, it is not like with your mother, for whom there is only you. Eloisa has a lot of choice: and she is having a lot of fun seeing how you are in her hands, when you cry, to her, it is like music.

Only two things in life deserve absolute fidelity: la Ferrari and il parmigiano. I ask you to think and to always consult your mother.

Abbracci Benedetto

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2010


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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

© 2023 Helena Frith Powell
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